


Stray Cat

by Wintervention



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Big Sisters, Chinese Food, Late Night Conversations, Mild Angst, One Shot, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-24 01:33:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16170884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wintervention/pseuds/Wintervention
Summary: A lifetime of working in hospitality has taught her how to read people with terrifying accuracy; a lifetime of living in New York has taught her the type to walk around with that specific look in their eyes. She doesn’t pity him, but she can’t stop her heart from aching just a little more every time he sits at that table.An insight in to the relationship between Nadia and Ash





	Stray Cat

Nadia Wong has, as of the months just gone, seemed to develop quite the fondness for the mange-ridden stray cats that appear to have colonised the back alley doorstep of the Chang Dai restaurant as their home. And really, how could she not- they’ve proven themselves time and time again to be far smarter, and exponentially more cunning than the pigeons, rats and roaches that have all made similarly desperate attempts at crawling through the cracks in the brickwork (of course, to a significantly lower degree of success).

A cracked broom handle, one that has been unusable for sweeping for a long time, now stands lonely and forgotten by the door, no longer needed to shoo the strays away when they come screaming two hours before dawn. Nadia doesn’t mind that their clawing for attention has started to shred the wood of the door- it’s rotting, and it needs replacing soon enough anyway. She doesn’t mind tripping over them occasionally when she uses that door- she’s learned not to carry heavy or hot things through without checking the ground around her first.

Part of her can’t help but pity the poor souls, all matted fur and war torn ears, the skin on the bottoms of their feet and their eyes both hardened by a life lived on wet, dimly lit, cold concrete. The other part knows and understands full well that those little beasts, with their gleaming white teeth and sidewalk sharpened claws, can fend for themselves far easier than she could ever dream of doing.

They’re almost concerningly clever. There’s no more caterwauling at the doorstep at all hours any longer- they still sit there, curled up out of the rain under the stoop, looking far more vulnerable and soft than Nadia imagines they mean to- but they’ve learned that screaming will get them nowhere. That is, at least, until after the restaurant closes. At midnight- or earlier, if it’s been a particularly uneventful evening, and her feet are beginning to hurt- when the last customer has left with a full stomach, the cash register has been emptied, and the lights switched off, then the night’s leftover chicken becomes fair game, and the symphony of yowls can begin.

And this has often been the case, except on the days that Shorter happens to be around, which is far less frequently than she would like nowadays. Though she wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that her younger brother has in fact been sneaking around the place every day, and she just hasn’t happened to notice yet. After all, he’s no longer the eight year old stood on the tips of his toes at the counter, taking orders for take-out when their parents were too preoccupied to handle everything at once themselves. Then, Nadia had just about been able to keep an eye on him through the crowd of people that would congregate on their busiest nights.

But now, when he does dare to show his face, more often than not Nadia is watching him feed scraps of chicken skins he’s managed to scavenge from the kitchen, and collect in a small take-out box, to the cats that gather around his feet; sunglasses tossed aside and his eyes lit up with a bright smile, the cats themselves staring up at his beaming face with a similar expression of awe. It makes a difference from the impatient scowls she receives when she tosses out strings of fat and broken eggshells.

It’s a sweet sight- one she misses dearly, one she grabs hold of and keeps close to her heart whenever it comes within reach. And if it weren’t for the shrill bell of an impatient order ringing a constant chime in the back of her mind, maybe she’d stand and watch for a little while longer some days peering through the broken glass panel in the door that she hasn’t gotten around to boarding up quite yet.

One night, she’d sat there with him. They didn’t speak much- for once, they didn’t have much to say. But every so often, one of them would point a finger towards the feline hoard, picking out a particularly distinct looking cat and blessing it with some silly little moniker that she can no longer recall from the top of her head. Not that she’d be able to connect it with any one of the creatures, or even be sure that it is in fact the same cats that return night after night- that’s not her business.

 

Though, she can’t help but keep noticing the same slight-faced, long-limbed thing that saunters his way up to the building every now and then- not every night- but close enough. This one, she has a much easier time remembering. He’s much quieter than the others, opting for the far more civilised knocking method of garnering attention, rather than trying to scream the door down. And if nobody answers, he’s learned how to navigate the door handle; this is not a rare occurrence, for the sound of a light tap on soft wood can hardly compete with the city’s symphony, even in the early hours between sundown and sunrise. Nadia hasn’t gone to bed with the door locked in some time. And when she does, he knows which corner of the doormat she hides the key under.

Not that she finds herself in bed on these nights often. She doesn’t like to call it a sixth-sense, but she seems to know exactly when he’ll show up, wrapped in a far more expensive coat than he ought to be wearing on this street, but still shivering nonetheless. And she waits for him, one burner on the stove on low, keeping a small pan warm under a glass lid. She’s found out that he prefers soul-warming soups to yet-to-be-seasoned strips of raw meat, and is partial to the odd mass-produced fortune cookie they keep around for appearance’s sake- only if he’s pulled out and torn apart, or screwed up the tiny slip of paper and pushed it as far aside as the table will allow first.

There’s a bowl on the Formica table top before he can sit down. He takes his coat off, and she instinctively takes it to hang over the back of the chair herself. There’s no need for it in here, the air still warm from hours of cooking. The shivering had stopped the second his front foot crossed the threshold. He sinks in to the seat like it’s made of age-softened leather and plump cushions, rather than being a cheap plastic thing with one leg significantly shorter than the other three.

It takes a while before either of them speak, Nadia busying herself by tidying the already clean kitchen so that it doesn’t feel as though she’s hovering over him while he eats. Which he does, lie the rest of the strays, lie it’s the first decent, warm, home-cooked meal he’s had in a while, and the last he’ll have in the days-maybe weeks- to come. But he does so like he’s at the top table of a five star Michelin restaurant, dressed in a neat dinner suit rather than a pair of ripped jeans smelling like the subway, listening to an esteemed string quartet playing some composer or other, not whatever happens to be playing on the little portable radio in that moment (that is, of course, if she hasn’t lost track of its whereabouts again).

But when he’s finished, the bowl scraped clean and the spoon set down, and he’s had a few minutes to let it settle, Nadia sits in the chair opposite. The tension in his shoulders releases significantly, and his back slumps as though he’s relaxed, but infinitely more exhausted.

 

“Shorter isn’t here,”

She knows that that’s not why he’s here. If it was Shorter he was looking for, he would have gotten off the train two stops later, disappeared down some random alley in a network he knows like the back of his hand, one Nadia has yet to figure out- not that she’s entirely sure that she wants to- and slip through a rotting door not entirely unlike the one behind Chang Dai. That is where he would find Shorter, and there’s no doubt in her mind that he knows this.

If she would have had to guess- and she does, often, of her own volition- she would guess that his reason for showing up on the doorstep with an indeterminate frequency is nothing more than his intrinsic human need for warm contact, the type he can’t find in an underground bar or the stairwell of a rundown tenement building, the type he can’t buy with the respect that seems to accompany needless violence on these streets. A lifetime of working in hospitality has taught her how to read people with terrifying accuracy; a lifetime of living in New York has taught her the type to walk around with that specific look in their eyes. She doesn’t pity him, but she can’t stop her heart from aching just a little more every time he sits at that table.

He never stays for long. Six or seven songs, at most, if the radio is working. Less than half an hour if she counts on her watch. No time at all, if she checks the clock by the window above the stove, which has not actually shown the passing of a single minute in the last three years. Suddenly, the tentative beginnings of a comfortable atmosphere will snap, and he’ll be on his feet with his jacket on, and halfway to the door before Nadia realises that he’s moved at all. She’ll walk him out in to the alley; watch him lean down to bid the gathering cats a fond farewell; and see him disappear.

She won’t sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> This is based solely on the anime, in which Nadia's character is painfully under-utilised. I have not read the manga, but it is my understanding that she plays a larger role there- so if any of this goes against the events of the manga, do try and forgive me.


End file.
